by Loretta Ross
“Minor heads of state, anyway,” he continued. “Deputy ministers and assistant secretaries and illegitimate third cousins of royalty. That sort of thing. At any rate, Mimi was proud of them and of herself. I only knew her briefly, when I was young and she was quite old. She’d sit in her wheelchair in the nursing home with her gaze distant and her eyes shining and sing snatches of arias in a quavering voice. This portrait is one she had commissioned when she returned to the States. It’s by Volkmer. Have you heard of him?”
“No, I’m not familiar with that artist. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He’s mostly known regionally. He’s generally considered to be technically adept but hardly groundbreaking. More a craftsman than an artist, if you follow me. Still, he had some lovely work and there are a few collectors who quite like him.” Appelbaum gave Death a bright, rueful smile. “And now you’re wondering if I brought you all this way to ramble on about dead opera singers and obscure artists.”
“It’s always interesting to learn new things,” Death said, “but I will admit that I’m curious.”
Appelbaum nodded. He waved Death to a chair and went back around his desk to claim his own seat.
“About twenty minutes southwest of here there’s a private museum, the Warner Museum of Frontier Arts. Have you heard of it?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“It’s in Lee’s Summit. There was an upscale men’s college there in the twenties. It went under after the stock market crashed. The main building was this lovely, Italianate mansion. It was in danger of being torn down before the museum owners rescued it. They bought it and refurbished it to hold their collection.” Appelbaum folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “The Warner family have been friends of my family for generations. In 1967 my grandfather allowed them to take Mimi’s portrait on a long-term loan arrangement. The agreement was that they could display the piece indefinitely, but that anytime a member of the family wanted it back, the museum would return it. Chase Warner, the current museum director and one of my contemporaries, contacted me about two months ago regarding the painting. He wanted to know if it would be okay to allow an art history student to study it using modern technology as part of her doctoral thesis. She wanted to do things like x-ray the painting to look for information about the painting techniques, pigments used, things of that nature.”
Appelbaum took a folder from a drawer in his desk and paused a moment, looking down at it pensively but not opening it right away. Finally he sighed, tapped it with his forefinger, and went on.
“When they x-rayed the painting, what they found was another painting underneath.”
“But that’s not really unexpected, is it?” Death knew he might seem like a big dumb jarhead, but his mother had been an academic and his parents and grandparents had seen to it that he and Randy were exposed to a wide range of cultural experiences.
“No. No it’s not. In fact, it would be remarkable if there wasn’t anything under the painting. Artists frequently do studies of the work they’re painting before they get to the final version. And they’re often poor—‘starving artist’ is a saying for a reason. Canvas is expensive and it’s not unusual for an artist to paint over an earlier work. The reason this painting is cause for comment is because of the nature of the painting under this one. They aren’t just able to detect the painting under the painting. Scientists can use the information they find to identify the specific pigments used, and in what combination, and they can actually produce a computer image of the underlying painting.”
He slid a sheet of paper out of the folder and pushed it across the desk toward Death.
Death studied it. “A cityscape?”
“Chicago, to be precise.” Appelbaum leaned forward and tapped one finger on the picture, pointing out a tall, slender rectangle rising above the other buildings on the right side of the painting. “This building is the Aon Center.” He sat back and looked Death in the eye. “Construction on it began in 1970 and it was completed in ’74.”
Death pushed the paper away and sat back so he could look at Appelbaum directly. “The painting of your great-great-grandmother is a forgery.”
“It has to be. And it’s a forgery that was done at some point after my family lent the painting to the Warners.”
“Forgive me for asking this,” Death said, “but from what you’ve told me, the original portrait doesn’t seem like a particularly valuable piece of artwork, in monetary terms.”
“It’s not. It’s worth a few hundred dollars maybe. Mostly it has sentimental value.” He clasped his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “The Warner family are our friends. Their museum has very good security. The painting was stolen and replaced with a forgery while it was in their possession. I need to know how this happened. I need to know why.”
Death had never intended to become a private investigator. When he joined the Marines, he’d been choosing a career. If that fell through for some reason, his next choice would have been to either follow in his father’s footsteps and go into a career into law enforcement or follow his grandfather and brother into the fire service.
Life, as he had learned, is not interested in your intentions.
The walk back to the parking garage hadn’t been too bad, but then he decided to climb four flights of concrete steps rather than take the elevator. By the time he was sitting behind the wheel of his Jeep, he was lightheaded and had spots in front of his eyes.
He took a few minutes to just sit there and catch his breath. Then, since he wasn’t in any hurry, he pulled out his phone and called to check in with Wren. She answered on the second ring and the sound of her voice, as always, made him smile.
“Hi, sweetheart. What’s up?” she asked.
“Just calling to check in with my beautiful bride-to-be.”
She laughed across the phone line. “I didn’t know the Blarney Stone was in Kansas City.”
“No blarney,” he assured her. “I’m totally sincere. Hey, listen. Have you ever heard of the Warner Museum of Frontier Art?”
“Hmm.” Death could picture her thinking about it, closing one eye and wrinkling her nose. “Maybe? I’m thinking they have a buyer who occasionally comes to our auctions, if we have something out of the ordinary. Doris would know.” Doris was the company’s art expert. “Why?”
“I’m headed that way before I come home. It’s connected to a new case I have.” He gave her a brief rundown on the case of the counterfeit lady (and laughed at himself as he thought of the title, like Watson writing up Sherlock Holmes’ newest adventure).
“Okay, that’s weird. Why would anyone go to the trouble to forge a painting that wasn’t that valuable?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d have ideas.”
Wren started to answer him, then paused to speak to someone at her end. Death heard her say “no thanks, I’m fine.” In the background he could hear footsteps on a bare floor and the unmistakable sound of police band radios.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m at the sheriff’s office.”
“Ah.” He frowned at his phone. “Do you need bail money?”
“Not yet?”
“Seriously, what happened? Is anything wrong?”
“It’s fine. It’s just, you remember that ghost that Mr. Larsen said he saw in the old boathouse? His daughter’s ghost?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what he saw was Matthew Keystone. He and Mercy were messing around in the boathouse, up in the sail loft, exploring. It was used for storage and there’s a ton of junk up there—sails and rope and life jackets and oars and fishing tackle. You name it. Against the south wall there’s a row of lockers. They all have combination locks on them and darling Matthew knows how to get them open without the combination.”
“That boy’s going to be either a cop or a robber when he grows up,” Death said
.
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“So what did they find? Because I’m still not hearing anything that sounds like ‘police station’ to me.”
“A bundle of clothes stuffed into one of the lockers, way back in a corner. It looks like one of the costumes the Viking reenactors wear. There’s an overdress and a pinafore-type thing, and a kind of a headpiece with a scarf to cover the hair. Matthew put the headpiece on and was prancing around pretending to be Miss America. He must have gotten in front of the window and, with his red-gold hair and fair coloring, Mr. Larsen mistook him for his daughter.”
“Okay, but …?”
“I’m at the sheriff’s office because I brought in the dress and pinafore. They’re pretty badly rotted, but they were rolled up and hidden inside a small canvas sail and that probably protected them some. But they’re absolutely caked with some kind of rusty brown stain. I could be wrong, but I think it’s blood. I don’t think Mr. Larsen saw his daughter’s ghost at the yacht club the day she disappeared—I think he saw her. I think this was probably her costume, and I think it was absolutely drenched in blood.”
four
Wren was just saying goodbye to Death when deputies Orly Jackson and Tommy Thomas came back into the room together.
“What I’m saying is that there are protocols for a reason!” Tommy waved his arms at Orly like he was trying to attract the attention of a lazy bull. “If we expect to do good police work, we have to follow the protocols. And not just when it’s convenient. We have to follow the protocols all the time!”
Orly was eating something out of a Kansas City Chiefs mug and he spoke with his mouth full. “Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah.”
“What’s wrong?” Wren asked.
“He’s psycho,” Orly said.
Thomas turned to her, aggrieved. “He used my forensic slow cooker to make noodles.”
“I’m hungry,” Orly defended himself. “Some of us have been working all day.”
Wren blinked. “You have a forensic slow cooker?”
“It’s for boiling bones clean when we find partly skeletized remains. You know? Human remains that are mostly decayed but still have some flesh on them. First we take samples of the remaining tissue, then we have to boil the bones to get the skin and maggots and whatnot off of them, so we can study them for clues and maybe get an artist to do a facial reconstruction on the skull. That sort of thing.”
“Gah.” Wren moved a little farther from him, disgusted. “Do you get a lot of partly skeletized human remains?”
“None yet,” Orly said. “But he’s hoping.”
“I’m trying to be prepared. Once something has happened, it’s too late to be ready for it. And it doesn’t help when this wannabe chef comes in and uses my equipment to cook with.”
“Jeez! I didn’t hurt anything. And I’ll wash the slow cooker.”
“Like that’s gonna help. There will still be traces of your cooking. What happens when I have to send a sample to the FBI and they want to know why the victim has chicken DNA?”
Orly put his spoon back in his mug and set it down so he could talk with his hands. “One,” he said, “if you can’t clean it well enough to get rid of traces like that, you can’t use it more than once anyway, because the DNA of every previous victim will show up with each new victim. Assuming you ever get more than one victim to work on. And two, you said you take samples before you boil the bones, so there wouldn’t be chicken DNA in your samples anyway.”
They both looked to Wren, as if she were some kind of judge in their debate.
“I’m still not sure why you have a forensic slow cooker,” she said.
“Salvy let him get it last year,” Orly said. Salvy was Casey Salvadore, the much-beloved local sheriff. “It was on sale for, like, three dollars on Black Friday.”
“It’s a valuable piece of laboratory equipment,” Thomas insisted.
“Like the blender and the paint mixer?”
Wren made a face at Orly. “It is kind of gross that you’re cooking in something that’s used to boil maggoty dead bodies.”
“Theoretically used to boil maggoty dead bodies,” Orly corrected her. “It’s not like it’s ever actually been used.”
“Not on a human,” Thomas said, “but I found this roadkill possum …”
Orly gave Thomas a look of horror. His eyes grew wide. He slapped a hand over his mouth and ran out of the room.
“That was mean.” Wren peered at the young deputy, studying his face. “You’re lying,” she decided.
“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. He’ll never know.”
Wren sighed and shook her head. “What about the clothes?” she asked. “Could you find out anything? Was it really blood or not?”
“It was blood. There’s this chemical we use, luminol? It reacts with the iron in blood and glows under a black light. I tested it on a corner of the dress and it lit up like a Christmas tree. Now, this only tells me that it is blood. It doesn’t tell me if it’s human. I’ve sent samples to the state crime lab. We’ll have to see what they find out. You say there was a missing girl who could have been wearing this outfit?”
“The Viking’s daughter. I don’t remember her name, if I’ve heard it.”
“Viking?”
“The Viking reenactor. The old man who passed out at the yacht club today. Mr. Larsen.”
“Well, I looked through our internal files on missing persons and couldn’t find anything. Do you know when she was reported missing?”
“Back in the late seventies, I think.”
“Ah. Those records might not be in the computer database yet. I’ll ask the sheriff about it when he gets back. Anything criminal that happened in Rives County, ever, he knows about it.”
“Salvy’s not here right now?”
“No, he’s at a luncheon the Chamber of Commerce is holding. They’re giving him an award for protecting their businesses. Salvy’s in a league of his own when it comes to catching guys trying to steal.”
The early 1900s was a time of great optimism in the United States. The Age of Industry had arrived and anything seemed possible.
Death thought about what was to come: the Great Depression, two world wars, Korea, Vietnam … Many things born in that bright dawn had not survived.
One of those things was the Ruskin Heights Seminary, an ambitious men’s college intended to groom and educate the young gentlemen who would one day lead society. The seminary had collapsed shortly after the stock market did in ’29, but its gorgeous Italianate main building had survived and found new life as a home for the Warner Museum of Frontier Art.
Death stood in the lobby, reading a brochure he’d taken from a stand inside the door:
In the 1800s, as America surged west, hardy and resourceful pioneers made use of whatever they had at hand to make their lives both easier and brighter. American folk art came into its own, with hand-carved bowls and utensils, rustic toys and tools, and textile arts such as quilting and needlework that remain popular even today.
What is less well-known is that frontiersmen and women also placed a premium on the traditional fine arts. Burgeoning communities prided themselves on their level of civilization. Museums and opera houses were widespread. Every little town had at least one glee club, and small town businessmen and their wives formed poetry clubs and literary societies. Painters and sculptors and poets and musicians joined the trek west and left us with art and images that have, even now, the power to stir the human soul.
The Warner Museum of Frontier Art was founded with a grant from the Abigail Warner Foundation. Its purpose is to collect, study, and celebrate all forms of art created west of the Mississippi between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the Great Depression in 1929. We invite you to stroll through the house and grounds. Study our collections of painting, sculpture, folk and textile arts, and d
epictions of frontier architecture. Enjoy a quiet afternoon in the formal gardens or join us in the ballroom to listen to some of the Midwest’s finest musicians perform. Follow us online for concert and special event schedules.
Heels clicking on the marble floor drew Death’s attention. He looked up to find a bright-faced young woman in a sleeveless yellow dress coming toward him with a smile. Death smiled back, not quite as energetically.
“Hi! I’m Lila. Would you like me to show you around?”
“Hello, Lila. Do you work here?”
“Yes, I’m interning here as part of my master’s degree in film history.”
“Film history? At a frontier museum?”
“Sure. The first motion picture cameras were invented in the 1890s. New Jersey was originally the center of the American film industry, but Thomas Edison and his associates held patents on all the cameras and film and processes used. That gave them almost complete control over the industry, so independent filmmakers went out to California so they could—”
“Break the law without getting caught?”
Lila gifted him with a sunny smile. “Yeah. And the good filming weather helped too.”
Death smiled back. “I’m Death Bogart. I have an appointment with Dr. Warner.”
Lila’s smile fell away and she looked like she was going to be ill. “Oh, right. I’ll take you to his office.”
“Thank you.”
She took three steps, stopped, and turned back.
“I swear we don’t know how that painting got switched,” she said. “We can’t understand how it was even possible. Do you know where it was hanging?”